


Looking to the Past

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-05
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 21:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/398318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle takes the initiative in trying to find a way to prevent the ogres destroying her family's land.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking to the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, taken from a prompt by library-aileas on tumblr, but in completely the wrong direction.

_The sky was red with the blood of the fallen. Black smoke filled the air. The battle was merciless and the air filled with the screams of the dying._

_It was in the darkest hour, when all hope was lost, when the army was on the brink of defeat that he came. The Dark One brought his terrible power to the battlefield. He walked from nothing into the middle of the war and raised his hands, and the battle stilled as if frozen._

_He said in tones that brooked no argument that the battle was ended._

_An ogre fought the power binding him, and in an instant was gone._

_The leader of the ogres, seeing the terrible power of the Dark One, lowered his weapons._

_Thus, the Dark One ended the first Ogre War._

______________________________________________

 

Belle laid the book down, hardly daring to breathe. If the book was accurate, then it was possible to stop the ogres. She didn't know what this Dark One was, but if there was some kind of magic that could push the ogres back, even create a truce, it had to be worth finding. 

Papa would be relieved, she knew, but she didn't dare tell him, not until she learned more.

The first ogre war was centuries before, so maybe the Dark One didn't exist anymore. They didn't have much time, she knew. There were rumours of the ogre army massing in the north east, and if they chose to march on the Southlands, then their armies would have to fight.

No one wanted to face the ogres. Everyone knew they were practically unbeatable by human means, no matter how powerful the weapon. 

The best option was to use catapults and stay as far away as possible, but ogres had no instinct for self-preservation, and would charge on regardless of anything that was thrown at them. The ones who avoided the catapults would be even more merciless to the humans they encountered, and Belle had heard stories, when she snuck into the war councils.

No one wanted to face an enemy who could grab a man by both arms and tear him in half as if he were a paper doll.

Abandoning the book, she returned to another. Some of them were useful with lists of the contents, but many of them, she had read so many times that she could find what she needed from memory. She flicked through page after page, until she found what she was looking for.

The Dark One.

Supposedly, it was just a myth. According to the book, it was a great and terrible creature that killed without qualm or conscious. It had no boundaries and no limits. It could not be killed, not truly. It could break men like twigs. It could turn oceans to dust. It was the creature parents whispered of to their children to make sure they behaved well. 

Belle drummed her fingers on the page thoughtfully. Well, every myth had a source in fact, no matter how distant. History suggested that the Dark One was real, even if every other book since then suggested otherwise. 

For the next few days, she closed herself away with all the books she could from the archive, and studied them all, taking notes and marking dates. 

Papa was a little put out, what with her betrothed being in the castle and determined to make his presence known. Belle almost felt sorry for her father. Gaston was a gallant, but he was about as interesting as a puddle drying on a hot day.

Well, she would be married to him soon enough. Papa could be bored by him in her stead. If she found a solution to their problem, then maybe they wouldn’t need Gaston and his legion, and the marriage could be quietly called off. 

The books, in the end, were of little help.

The Dark One was never mentioned again after the Ogre Wars. The so-called great and terrible power seemed to vanish completely from the records. Belle fell back on the bed, the latest book she was reading flopping over her face.

Surely, so great a power wouldn’t just vanish.

All the old records suggested that it wasn’t something that could be destroyed, so what had happened to it? Had it simply had enough of being dark and terrible and chosen to retreat to the country to have a farm? She doubted it.

She tilted the book back up.

Unless…

Maybe, maybe it was possible that it simply stopped being called the Dark One. Maybe the fear got too much, and people gave it a different name. It could still be powerful and terrible, but maybe it was just called something different.

She scrambled upright and across the bed. 

Something powerful. Something that could once have been the Dark One.

The young Lady of the Southlands almost fell off her bed in her urgency to get to her books, pulling half a dozen towards her in a heap, and flipping through them one after the other. The answer, she knew, was here, somewhere, and she would find it, if it took her days and weeks.

 

______________________________________

 

Sir Maurice was growing desperate.

It wasn’t that his future son-in-law was an unpleasant youth. He was just so very, very dull. Even when he talked about the impending war or even the impending marriage, he described everything in the same slow, flat tone. The most dire and terrible news or even the most thrilling of battle stories became dragging and dull on the man’s lips. 

Sir Maurice had a worried suspicion that Belle might take a lesson of the cattle merchants and arrange for some fresh ginger to be introduced to an unfortunate part of Gaston’s anatomy if Gaston didn’t show himself to be at least a little more enthused on their marriage day. 

Belle was not one who dealt well with tedium.

She had also installed locks on her doors without her father knowing, and no matter how much he pleaded for her to come and save him from Gaston’s drone, she called back that she was on the verge of a discovery.

Sir Maurice dragged his attention back to the maps that Gaston was talking over. Something about flood plains and flats or some such. He tried his best to look interested, but all he could think of was the fact that the war was coming, and if they survived, he would be trying his daughter for the murder of the most boring man in the Southlands within six months.

“Papa!”

“Belle?” He pushed past Gaston as Belle flew through the doors of the hall, laden down with books. “Oh, thank the Gods.”

She flashed him a knowing look at his words, before spilling all the books over Gaston’s precious maps. “I think I’ve found the person who can stop the ogres,” she said eagerly, her face alight with eager pride. 

“That’s impossible,” Gaston said, looking doubtfully at the books. “No one can stop the ogres.” His nose wrinkled. “Are all of these yours?”

“Yes, and many more besides,” Belle said, pushing some of his model castles out of the way to open up several of the books. There were scraps of paper used to mark pages and she tugged on her father’s sleeve pulling him closer. “Look. Here. In the oldest records of the earliest ogre war, there’s mention of the creature that stopped it.”

“The Dark One?” Sir Maurice looked at her in concern. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“Papa, it’s the only creature that ever stopped the ogres,” Belle said, squeezing his arm. “I’ve been trying to find what became of it, and I managed to pick up the trail about fifty years later.” She trailed her fingers from book to book, from decade to decade. She looked up at his face, smiling, hopeful, her eyes so bright. “Papa, I found out what the Dark One’s name is. I know who he is. I know how we can prevent the war from coming to us.”

“Who?” Sir Maurice asked. 

She licked her lips, then whispered, “Rumpelstiltskin.”

Sir Maurice’s chest felt as if it had tightened suddenly. “Rumpelstiltskin?” he echoed. “The monster? I’ve heard tales that he steals children and sells souls.”

Belle waved a hand dismissively. “Folklore,” she said, though she didn’t sound convinced. If she was so hopeful that this was the solution to the coming war, Sir Maurice knew she would overlook anything that could protect their lands. “Papa, if we write to him, ask him if he can help us before the ogres move, maybe he can stop them ever reaching us.”

“He’s a danger himself,” Gaston put in.

Belle shook her head. “As long as his price is paid, I think he keeps his end of any bargain he makes,” she said. “All the books say the same: he makes deals and he sticks to them, and you have to pay the price. No one breaks deals with him.”

“No one lives if they break a deal with him,” Sir Maurice said quietly. 

“So we don’t break a deal,” Belle said impatiently. “Papa, you know our armies won’t be able to hold back the ogres. No one can.” She spread one hand one her book. “No one except the man who stopped the first ogre war.”

“The monster,” he corrected her.

“My armies will be enough,” Gaston said. “We don’t need to run to some dark sorcerer.”

Belle looked imploringly at her father, who shook his head. “Belle, I’ve heard too many horrifying tales about Rumpelstiltskin to put our land’s defences into his hands. If worst comes to worst…”

“It might be too late,” Belle said indignantly. He could understand her point, but she hadn’t grown up with tales of the trickster imp. Sir Maurice had heard of people who lost everything because the price demanded was far higher than anything they expected.

“Belle.” Her father took her hands between his. “If worst comes to worst, if we have no other choice, that’s the only time I would consider calling on him for aid. Gaston has his army. We have ours.”

Gaston nodded. “You’ve done well,” he said. “But you really didn’t need to worry so much or read all this nonsense. We’ll take care of it.” He inclined his head and bowed slightly. “You can get back to your embroidery.”

Sir Maurice caught Belle’s wrist before she could grab a book to lob it at him. “Belle,” he murmured warningly. “I don’t want to have depend on dark magic to go against other creatures that are known to be magical. But…”

“But if worst came to worst,” she said unhappily. “Papa, we could stop it before it begins…”

Sir Maurice knew she meant well, but their Kingdom wasn’t rich enough to afford any price Rumpelstiltskin might ask. They had gold, but barely any, and their land was no longer as fertile or valuable as it had once been. He couldn’t bear to think of how disappointed she would be in him if she summoned Rumpelstiltskin, only for him to turn them down flat.

“We’ll think on it, Belle,” he promised.

 

_______________________________________________

 

 

Since papa had stopped her from throwing a book at Gaston’s idiot head, Belle made herself better by hurling them at her bed instead. It was childish and churlish and just for a moment, she didn’t care at all. 

She couldn’t stand the way Gaston spoke down at her, and not simply because he was ridiculously tall. He talked as if she didn’t have any idea how her own family’s kingdom was run. He dismissed her opinions in the war room, because - and it really infuriated her when he actually said aloud - she was a woman. He took her entirely at face-value, expecting her to be like the shallow, cosseted primping women of his family’s household.

She sat down heavily on the wooden chest at the foot of her bed and kicked her heel back against it in frustration. That did little to help, save the bruise her heel and make her use one of the curses that her father was sure she didn’t know.

It could stop the war before it started, but because men liked hitting each other with swords and sticks, no one would listen to the sense of it. She could see her father was afraid of Rumpelstiltskin, but surely, making a deal with a sorcerer who could spare them the deaths of hundreds could only be a good thing.

Belle sat in silence for a long time, staring down at the toes of her shoes, peeping out from beneath her skirts. 

Finally, she got up and went to her desk. 

While Gaston and some of the men in the household thought it improper for a woman to read or think, her father knew she would be running these lands one day, even if her guiding hand was working unseen behind the hulking shape of Gaston. Her father knew she had wit and ingenuity and was not afraid to act.

She sat down at the desk with her pen and ink, and smoothed a sheet of her best writing parchment. She tested the nib thoughtfully, gazing off into middle distance, then nodded. She knew precisely what to write, and how to phrase it. 

Belle dipped the nib delicately into the ink, then started to write, using her most elegant script. There was no pleading, no begging, nothing quite so humiliating. She only stated their case, offered what the Kingdom had, and closed with a simple please.

With only a little rebelliousness, she added her father’s signature.

Once the letter was done, she sat back and gazed at it.

They could have a few days reprieve, she decided mercifully. If they were still being stubborn fools, when the ogres moved, then the letter would be sent, and she would inform them of it afterwards. By then, it would be too late to stop it.

Belle smiled to herself.

Rumpelstiltskin would help them, whether her father and fiancé wanted him to or not.


End file.
